


Sometimes It Hurts to Breathe

by Splashedsidewalks



Category: Rise of the Tomb Raider (Video Game), Tomb Raider (Video Game)
Genre: Betrayal, Cheesy, Flash Fic, Gen, Hope, Monologue, Survival, Wilderness Survival, adding tags as I go
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-04
Updated: 2016-06-14
Packaged: 2018-05-04 19:08:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 2,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5345306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Splashedsidewalks/pseuds/Splashedsidewalks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snippets of the Rise of the Tomb Raider game, moments that crystallized the world for Lara, even just for an instant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Hopeful Beginning

The air was clean and crisp, burning her lungs with every freezing breath. It tasted like success. 

Lara looked out at the mountains in front of her, white peaks stabbing the sky. The sight was both beautiful and invigorating. They were close, she could feel it. Just a bit more and the lost city would be in their grasp. 

“The men can't go any further,” Jonah’s voice rumbled behind her, his boot crunching on the snow as he came up to stand beside her. “They won't make it past another mountain.”

“But it is right there, Jonah.” Lara traced the lines of the snow-covered points with her eyes as if she could see past it if she tried hard enough. “Kitezh is just past this mountain. We can't stop now. I can't stop now.”

“If you going, I'm coming too.” 

Lara flashed her friend a grateful grin before turning her attention back to the treacherous path they would have to take. They would find the city before Trinity and prove to the world that her father wasn’t crazy. His legacy would save everyone.

“Let's get going then.”


	2. Loss of Feeling

Her fingers twitched, digging into cool snow. Snow was supposed to be colder than this, wasn’t it? But at least she could still feel. That was a start.

Bit by bit she pulled herself into consciousness, away from the chilling expanse of nothing. Everything ached; somehow she doubted she would have felt worse if she had been run over by a steamroller. Several tons of snow, ice, and rock would do that. The fact that she was alive was a miracle in itself.

Everything was too bright as she heaved herself up to her elbow, needing to get an idea of her location. Bare trees and thick snow filled her vision.

Her old wound on her side tinged. 

Legs screaming as she forced blood through them, she climbed to her feet, staggering into a tree. 

Shelter, food, rest. 

She had survived before, she would again. One footstep and then another, trekking a path through the snow. The cold seemed to ignore her blizzard-proof jacket, going straight to her core. She stumbled again.

Just one more step. If she just took one more, and then one more, she would be there. Her feet dragged but she kept standing.

Shelter, food, rest, and heat. She wasn't done yet. Despite the pain and the worrying fact she couldn’t feel her toes, she wasn't about to hand the Source over to Trinity, not by a long shot.

Crofts didn’t give up.


	3. The Leap

Trinity was here already. Lara had hoped that she had been ahead of them, or at least tied, when she was still with Jonah. But by the sounds of it, they had been here for a while.

The wind brushed by her perch on the broken branch high off the ground. It would have tickled her cheeks, if she could still feel them, but frankly the best she could say for it was that it carried the human voices to her ear, lifting the few strands of hair that had refused to hide under the hat.

One thing she could say for sure: Trinity was not made up of woodsmen. She had heard quieter avalanches.

Of course their talking gave it away but that wasn’t the only sound marker that gave up their presence. They crunched through the snow-covered forest as if they owned it, breaking leaves and shooting at anything that moved. Apparently ammunition was well supplied. Which meant that they probably wouldn’t miss it if some went missing.

If she could get her hands on a gun.

A dark shaped moved underneath her and she stilled, even though if they were going to see her, they would have spotted her bright red jacket by now. Luckily this tree had enough branches to make it a little less obvious. 

The man moved closer, swing his gun in slow arcs across his field of vision. Lara carefully slid her knife out of the make-shift sheath at her belt and tested her footing on the branch. It wasn’t particularly slick. It shouldn’t impede her movement.

Snow crunched under dark boots and Lara’s breath went shallow. There was no one close by. She didn’t need to hide. It was time to take the offensive.

A dark-haired man in his thirties stepped below her and Lara jumped.


	4. Cold Warmth

For the first time in several hours, Lara felt warm, comfortable even. The fire roared in front of her, explosion tempering into flames that nipped at the sky. The tanker was in ruins- that had been the plan of course- and dark heaps lay half buried around white snow around it. The charred skin reminded her that she hadn’t eaten in a while.

She felt sick.

There were voices in the background now, it had taken them long enough to respond. Dropping to a half crouch, Lara drew her bow. She was still getting used to the new weight of ammo on her belt. It was comforting in a way. She could protect herself. 

The snow bit into her pants, contrasting with the heat that still washed over the side facing the tanker. Lara pulled an arrow from her quiver and waited, cold and warmth fighting to decide which one of them would win in the end. 

A dark lump nearby groaned and Lara drew her bow, the feeling familiar, memories of another place just beneath her gloves. An island, pain in her side, fear like she had never know… Sam.

Shapes flickered beyond the trees and Lara lined her sight, arms already straining. 

_Here they come._


	5. It could be worse

The arrow didn't even quiver as it pointed at her heart, the traitorous organ barely skipping a beat. What did it say about her that having someone try to kill her barely phased her? Surely her survival skills should kick in a some point, giving her an influx of adrenaline.

Da-dump. Da-dump.

All Lara felt was tired. Useless.

“We are on the same side. Trinity is trying to kill me just as much as you,” Lara said, trying to reason with the redhead. She was dressed strangely, a mixture of old and new. A shine of a metal knife at her belt, steel yet the arrow and looked hand-fletched. Her clothes were apparently hand-sewed, the stitches were large but even across leather and fine cloth. Ethnically she was… European? 

Descendant of the Lost City?

She didn't dare to hope.

“That has yet to be seen,” the woman said. Her English was practically perfect and relatively unaccented. Which meant what exactly? They had connection to modern media? Surely this far into Russia the native language should sound more Slavic.

The arrow stayed pointed at her. Lara kept her hands up. 

“I am not your enemy.”

The woman frowned and with that, Lara knew that the person in front of her had killed before and would again. More questions than answers.

“You have killed a number of the forces invading our valley. For that, if nothing else, I’ll let you live. But you will leave. If I see you again, I won't be so lenient.” She spoke with the confidence of a leader, or the arrogance of youth.

“I can’t leave now!” Lara heard herself say, voice harsh with passion. “I need to get the Artifact before Trinity!”

The woman sighed. “You waste your time outsider.” Then she released the arrow.

Lara didn't have time to blink much less try to avoid it. Her cheek strung. She reached up to press her fingers against the pain, removing blood. When she looked back up, the woman was gone. 

So there were hostile natives. It could be worse.

At least it wasn't quite as cold.


	6. Unlikely Allies

Having other people to talk to was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because humans were a social animal and there was something relaxing about having someone who wasn’t going to kill her on sight around.

It was a curse because some of them still hadn’t decided that yet.

Lara heaved herself up onto the final ledge, breathing the free air. The wind whipped tendrils of hair against her numbed skin, reminding her that she would have to take shelter at some point. It wasn’t quite as cold as before but the temperature was still dangerous.

Sometimes it felt like everything around here was.

Pulling her pickax from her belt, Lara jammed the edge into the metal box. It took only a slight excursion of strength for the thin metal to crack open like an egg. Instead of jewels, the inside was full of colored wires. In her case, almost as good.

It only took one swift motion to tear out the wires with her pickax, hopefully making the box beyond repair. The shrill electric screech that had been filling her ears faded and the world was natural once again.

Lara stretched then as she contemplated how to get back down to report to her ally.

An ally, there was a strange thought. After she had left behind Jonah, a large part of her thought that she would be alone in her fight against Trinity.

Maybe her chances of success were larger than she thought.


	7. Close Enemies

Lara knew something was wrong when he stopped choking Ana. Trinity didn’t value life, Ana should have been dead. But the full implications of the twisting of lower gut didn’t hit her until her surrogate mother spoke.

“That’s enough. She knows nothing.”

_No._

Lara grasped at straws even in her own mind as Ana coughed, trying to come to a conclusion other than the one that loomed in front of her like a canyon, limitless and dark. _It was impossible… Ana was…_

“I told you not to come, Lara. I wanted you to stay out of this. But you didn’t listen, you had—“

“How long?”

Ana paused, familiar features strange in their placement. “What do you mean?”

“How long were you with Trinity? Before or after you started screwing my father?” Her voice started calm and flat but climbed higher, too loud in the confined space.

Pain erupted in her chest and she fell backwards, nearly crushing her arms under her weight. The world spun even her vision focused on dust motes floating in the air around her. Lara closed her eyes tight and then forced herself to breath.

The blond pair were standing above her when she opened eyes again and the man pointed a gun at her. “We should end this.”

Ana grabbed his arm with a familiarity that only came with years of interaction. “No. Lara, we don’t have to be enemies. We can be on the same side, just like we used to be.”

Anger coiled in her gut where the apprehension had been before. This woman had pretended to be a part of her family. She had been there when her father died.

“Go to hell,” she whispered. Ana frowned, dissapointment etching lines on her face for brief seconds before she smoothed them away without a trace.

“Stick her in a cell. Maybe her mind will change when she realizes all that we can accomplish together.”

The blond man didn’t look pleased with Ana’s order but he followed it, waving at someone beyond Lara’s view. Hands grabbed at her, hoisting her up and away from the chair and into the darkness.


	8. My old friend, Pain

Sometimes Lara wondered how other people felt pain.

The cell doors slammed behind her and she threw herself at it, screaming profanities at the uniformed men as they walked away from her.

She remembered when she broke her arm trying to climb the vines outside the manor. She had cried and her father had held her, telling her what a brave girl she was.

This pain, the pain of betrayal, was worse.

Lara tried kicking the door, which only served to jar her leg and make a loud ringing noise echo through the dark space. She tried to keep her breathing normal as she slumped to the floor. It took but a second to get her hands in front of her and another to pull a spare pick from her boot.

Seeing her father’s body slumped over his desk and hearing it called suicide was one thing. That had been a knife to the gut, one that had never really removed. But having someone she had considered a mother turn against was a deeper kind of pain. It was a conscious decision against her and against the relationship she thought they had. Years of happy memories tainted.

Had Ana ever cared for her?

“That’s not going to work.”

Lara kept herself still as the man who spoke from behind her, but barely. If they had meant harm to her, they would have reached through the bars already. She broke her hands apart.

“I’ve heard that before.” Getting to her feet, she glanced at the speaker out of the corner of her eye. The cell next to her was dark, more shadow than shape but she could just make out a tall man with a dark beard. He didn’t seem too old or too young. Somewhere in between. 

The man hummed, amusement coloring his low voice. “What are you going to do?”

Lara looked at her cell, barren stone echoing her resolve back at her. “I’ll think of something.”

Several minutes and two broken walls later, Lara’s hands burned but she was closer to freedom. Besides, pain was an old friend. At least she knew it wouldn’t betray her.


	9. To Trust Again

"You won't get far without me. I know the land, the people... I can help you." The man's voice was soft but insistent, tugging on her ears. 

Lara's hands were already planning her escape, comfortable weight of her pistol against her thigh and lock picks tucked into a pouch at her back. Echoes of other prisoners spurned her on. _She needed to move._

The fellow prisoner's eyes stayed on her back, steady and sure. Lara turned her head ever so slightly to get a better look at him. 

Trinity had been harsh, fresh blood trickled down the side of his face near half healed wounds. Behind the bruises it was a strong face, straight lines and dim shadows. His exact ethnicity was hard to tell, European... something with a beard covering up the shape of his chin. 

Who was to say that Trinity hadn't put him here as a trap? Someone to follow her as she led them to the Artifact. But how far would they go? _Surely not..._

Ana had pretended to be a mother to her. Trinity would go as far as they felt that they had to.

She should leave him. She would lose nothing nor would she gain anything. 

But what if he died after she left? She could save him. Lara held her breath as her gear uncovered something extra in the locker. Another walkie-talkie and a key.

It was better if she was alone. No one would be hurt because of her. 

Her feet took her to the cell door where the prisoner waited. His expression didn't give away anything. If she let him go and he made a mistake, she could get caught and Trinity would be that much closer to getting the Divine Source.

"So you know where the Source is?" Lara asked, teeth of the key digging into her palm. If he spoke the truth... that was one step closer to proving that her father was right, that everything that he had been ridiculed for was fact rather than ravings. She needed that for her father.

And for herself.

The prisoner nodded, slowly, long hair brushing over his eyebrows to create shadows instead of eyes. "I know what you are all looking for."

"Is it here then?"

"Trust must go both ways. My name is Jacob," the man said.

"Lara." She let out the air that had been pressing against her ribs and stuck the key into lock. "We should get moving. The guards will be coming soon."

The door swung open and Lara stepped back. Jacob was taller without the bars between them. Tension swamped over her limbs as she waited to see if he would attack. If he was smart, he would wait till her back was turned to him. He seemed to study her as well. 

To trust again. It was harder than she expected.

A hoarse shout rebounded through the Russian bunker and Lara winced. Jacob's eyes flicked where the sound came from, somehow turning darker. "They will be making their rounds shortly. I know the way to to the train yard, if we go now, we should make it."

"Alright." Lara tested the thin thread of trust between them, at this point even a light breeze could break it. "Let's go."


End file.
